Legal Sources - A VIP Editorial
Jinfo Blog

By Nina Platt

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I was quite pleased to be asked to be guest editor for this issue as I have found VIP to be one of the more useful resources available to us as librarians to support our work. To add to that pleasure, this issue includes a comparison of Lexis®Library and Westlaw UK. I used Lexis Butterworths (now LexisLibrary) and Westlaw UK when I managed a library for a U.S. firm with international offices, and was glad to get an update regarding the services.

The review, written by Diane Raper, did not disappoint me. Despite their interfaces not having been updated since 2007 (Westlaw UK) and 2008 (LexisLibrary), Westlaw UK and LexisLibrary both continue to provide up-to-date primary law, secondary sources and news. They also excel at providing up-to-date legislative and regulatory information. Yet the value in Ms Raper's review is that she clearly describes the differences between the resources.

In the U.S., Lexis.com has many more full text journals than its counterpart, Westlaw.com; I expected similar results with Westlaw UK and LexisLibrary. To my surprise, Westlaw UK came out as the clear winner with 100 full-text journals to LexisLibrary's 56 full-text journals. Also, Westlaw.com has more forms than Lexis.com, while LexisLibrary has more forms than Westlaw UK.

The differences don't end there: Westlaw UK provides some EU content as part of the service, while EU content is a separate product from LexisLibrary. Meanwhile, LexisLibrary has better coverage of case law. LexisLibrary has handbooks, manuals and codes, while Westlaw UK does not.

These surprises were an important lesson to anyone working in a multinational environment: Don't assume your colleagues across the pond have access to the same content or have the same preferences for products, because they might well be fundamentally different.

I have not used the topic of this issue's second review, Debtwire, so was interested to learn about it. Debtwire is aimed at usage among hedge funds, proprietary traders, investment banking, legal and private equity firms, and is a bit unique in the news world in that 30 to 40 percent of the content is generated by contributing journalists rather than aggregated from other sources. Reporting on stressed or distressed companies, pre-restructuring or expected deals, Chapter 11, post restructuring, and high yield and leveraged loans, Debtwire provides information that is not available elsewhere.

Elsewhere in this issue, you have an opportunity to learn about how ICAAN is managing domain names with non-Latin characters, the use of mobile technologies in libraries, telecom's charging for online content provider's content delivery, and data protection for social and business networking.

All this and product news in Tap the Wire makes this issue a great read full of insight, ideas, and facts. Please read on.

Nina Platt is VIP's guest editor for June. Nina Platt, owner and principal consultant at Nina Platt Consulting Inc., is a law librarian and former AmLaw 100 firm library director.

This editorial appears in VIP Magazine No. 79, June 2010. Purchase online >>

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